Students weigh in on hot gun topics
One of my neighbors living off the Mullan Trail does home schooling for 16 students every Tuesday. A couple of weeks ago I was asked to fill in and teach her class in English grammar. I asked each student to pick from one of two subjects that are being discussed - gun control and illegal immigration. I told them after grading and correcting their papers I would pick out the two best and send them to The Press. They were all enthused to see their papers in the newspaper.
I am enclosing the two best after the corrections and they retyped them. These students are from 14 to 16 years of age.
BILL SINGLETON
Coeur d'Alene
"Unconstitutional Encroachment: Feinstein seeks to push gun ban through legislation"
By Jeremiah Chersin
Guns kill people you say? Guns have become evil and need a permanent demise you say? Before going gung hoe against the second amendment, a closer look at some logic will turn the light back on in the house of common sense known as the brain.
Interestingly enough, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that in 2005 445 people were murdered with rifles while 605 murderers that same year chose a hammer or club as their weapon of calamity. It has continued that way even to the present year. Over a million unborn babies are slaughtered each year, but no ban of abortion is in sight. Thousands die in car accidents, and there is no ban on driving.
Numerous other weapons have killed more people than rifles, and Feinsteins proposal to ban them will solve nothing, because if the criminals can't buy rifles legally, they'll just get them illegally, and it'll only prevent law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves. In her proposal she plans to ban a multitude of "assault rifles" and also plans to limit magazines to a max of 10 rounds or less.
If thought about logically, it not only strips Americans of their freedoms, but also leaves us indisputably defenseless from potential assailants. This leaves the criminals to freely plunder whatever they like, with little threat of resistance from the general populace.
If 50 percent of Americans carried firearms without having to worry about needless gun laws, then no sane individual would try to rob a bank or store, because all of the law abiding citizens would prevent them from doing much harm. The use of armed guards in schools would also help to minimize the tragedy in the education system. It took 20 minutes for first responders to arrive at the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, and it pains me to think of how many lives might have been saved that day if someone capable of stopping him had been there.
School teachers armed with a firearm could have averted this tragedy, but everyone has become scared of them, as if they have grown evil over the years. The days when kids left their guns hanging in the back window of their pickups has gone, a fleeting memory of past days. The public has become increasingly paranoid in this age of government control.
The solution I propose, to alleviate the gun violence in America steers in a completely different direction than Feinsteins, we need more legal guns in the community at large. With so many law abiding citizens carrying firearms, the common crook wouldn't even consider robbery or assault for fear of losing their life. Anyone attempting crime in the public realm could easily and quickly be suppressed with as little bloodshed as possible.
The limitation of firearms will solve only the personal agenda of Obama and nothing else. Don't fall into the trap the current administration has laid out for us. Open your eyes to logic and common sense, for without those, this country will crumble tragically and violently to the ground.
"Protecting the Second Amendment"
By Rylee Rieben
Abiding as citizens of the United States, our privileges and rights lay heavily upon the Constitution. Gun Control tests the boundaries of our Second Amendment, which clearly states the entitlement of our people to "keep and bear arms, that it shall not be infringed". And though the government may not be taking control over all firearms at the moment, it opens the door for them to dwindle our amount of defense and hunting weapons to zero.
Many believe taking control over guns can lower crime and secure our streets; nevertheless they act on emotion rather than logic, which then brands the act idle. Switzerland for example contains one of the highest ownerships of firearms in the world, yet has the lowest gun crime rate. And England, the crime capitol of Europe, possesses exceptionally strict gun laws.
As statistics show, firearms are used four times more often in self-defense than in crime. If law-abiding citizens no longer retain the right to possess a gun to defend themselves or their families against criminal violence, how will they protect themselves? As Americans, we need to stand for our Constitutional privileges and what we believe in.